Illegal sand mining alters the species composition of ants, beetles, and spiders in a grassland: A case study in Eastern Cape, South Africa
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17159/2254-8854/2025/a20570Keywords:
arthropods, conservation, abundance, species richness.Abstract
In the Eastern Cape, natural landscapes that are adjacent to rivers and the sea are threatened by illegal sand mining, which occurs without prior assessment of biodiversity. Sand mining activities lead to the reduction of vegetation cover and plant species richness. Generally, species richness of arthropods correlates positively with plant species richness. Thus, it is important to test the effect of sand mining on arthropod diversity. In this study we compared species richness, abundance, Shannon-Wiener diversity and composition of ants, beetles and spiders between sand-mined areas and the surrounding grassland. Arthropods were collected using pitfall traps in eight plots in the sand-mined area and eight plots in the surrounding grassland. The sand-mined area and the grassland supported similar species richness and abundance of arthropods. However, significantly greater diversity was in the surrounding grassland than the sand-mined area. Furthermore, species composition of arthropods between the two areas was significantly different. Additionally, there were 13 morphospecies that were indicators of the sand-mined area, and ten morphospecies that were indicators of the surrounding grassland, while there were no shared indicator species between the two study areas. As such, disturbance-tolerant species that prefer open habitats may have replaced specialist arthropods. Given that our study showed that illegal sand mining changes species composition and reduce the diversity of arthropods, sand mining should be restricted to designated areas to reduce the impact of mining on arthropods and improve conservation.
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